Celestron GCE
After 18 months good use, I have sold my CGE in order to upgrade to an even sturdier and more accurate mount.
This was my second mount. I purchased this in order to be able to increase the payload for photographic purposes. This mount was used solely in my observatory, thank God. The tripod alone weighed in at nearly 25kg ! The mount was very sturdily constructed and looked much more capable than the AS-GT. Typical of Celestron, the hand controller was good and had many functions. I never had any problems in the cold, although I had read that these were common. I never had any problems with this mount, only concerns. Firstly, the motor cables were very suspect, particularly how they connected to the mount. In forums I had read of many problems arising from this and that there was cable modification available, however this was a) not cheap and b) time consuming and complicated. My other concern was service, should anything go wrong. In the USA Celestron doesn’t have a good reputation and in Europe they don’t offer anything. I vowed that should I ever buy another mount, then a European one. In the end I did this, selling my CGE on to an astronomer in Germany, where I believe it is being used primarily for visual use.
Below are a few photos of the CGE in my observatory
and a few photos taken from this mount
M31 : LRGB je 15 x 200s Subframe
M33 : LRGB je 5 x 300s Subframe
M82 : Ausschnitt von original, L 30 x 300s Subframe, RGB je 5 x 300s Subframe
Last photos with CGE Mount:
In April 2011 I took my last photos with the CGE mount before dismantling it and selling it to an astronomer in Germany. I will now take a two month break from photography, catch up on my sleep and carry out some modifications to my observatory
The Twin Quasars – I retook this picture to get improved quality. Not very spectacular ? Well, look closely, in the ringed area is the Twin Quasar Q0957+0561A. This is at a distance of some 8 billion light years from earth and is the most distant object visible from the earth. Usually such objects are photographed from space telescopes such as Hubble, but even secondhand I cannot afford this. Having photographed this very difficult object, I tried to view it with my Dobson, no chance, it was simply to dim. Having said this, it awakened my interest and I did manage on a clear night to spot 3C273.0, a quasar some 2 billion light years away and as such much brighter ( but still only barely visible ).
M13 – I thought I take a photo of a star cluster, my first
The following was taken purely as a test, it is a stack of photos over a 3 hour period. Notice all the stars match except the one marked with an arrow. Why not this one ? Well, it is actualy an Asteroid, 181 Eucharis and as it is realatively close to earth ( some 300 million km ), it moves quite quickly. This particular Asteroid is only about 50km in diameter ie very small, but enough to reflect the sun's light and make it visible.
M104 The Sombrero Galaxy – having seen this visually the night before, I thought I must take a photo. Sadly the moon was very bright and I found no guide stars, hence just a few 20s subs.
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